Monday, 23 November 2009

On the Spot

Been quite a while since I did any interviews, for some reason, but that's all about to change, because there's one up at BookSpotCentral conducted by Elena Nola! We discuss stylistic voices, my winding path to the dizzy heights of full-time authoring, the book I'm currently working on, and the word f*ck, among other things.

I am too good to you...

Labels: interviews

Friday, 20 November 2009

Best of 2009? Already?

In what I trust shall be the first of many such appearances, Best Served Cold has been rated among the ten best sci-fi and fantasy releases of 2009.

In other news, an interesting discussion about fantasy cover art over at A Dribble of Ink kicked off by responses to the latest Mass Market Cover for Mark Charan Newton's Nights of Villjamur. The comments include some insightful stuff from industry insider-types like Lou Anders (of Pyr, who publish the First Law in the US, and also happens to have a Chesley award for art direction), Lauren Panepinto (who designs the covers for Orbit, including those of Best Served Cold), and the ever insightful Simon of Spanton (Hype-Meister General at Gollancz, my primary publisher, and was largely responsible for the idea behind the parchmenty covers for the First Law - some of the only covers I've ever been aware of that get near universal love). Well worth a look, since I know many of you like to tear your hair out/vomit in your mouths/otherwise express outrage about cover treatments.

Discussion runs particularly toward the area of dramatic figures on covers, and the commercial sense of making books look like other books in the genre, or trying to make them look radically different. Particularly interesting since the alternative UK artwork for Before They are Hanged should be along shortly, with its dramatic figure of Superior Glokta. I bet you can't wait to tear your collective hair out...

Labels: artwork, reviews

Wednesday, 11 November 2009

USA BSC MMP

See what I did there? Lauren Panepinto over at Orbit US have unveiled a new look for the Mass Market Paperback outing of Best Served Cold in the States which will be coming along in June next year, and it looks a little something like this:


Oooooooh. Interesting departure. I have to say I much prefer this to the US Hardcover look which drew such ire from you all when it was unveiled back in February. This approach makes sense to me - I think it stands a good chance of bringing in readers who might otherwise not have picked up my stuff, I think it looks bold, tough, and uncompromising (kind of like the content, hopefully), and above all it makes the book look like what it is - a fantasy thriller.

Anyway, I like it. As an approach, and as a piece of artwork, I think it's got guts. But no doubt you will all have your own opinions...

Labels: artwork

Thursday, 5 November 2009

Uncharted 2

It doesn't feel like long ago at all I was talking of Uncharted, speaking of its high qualities and hoping it would be the start of a long and beautiful series. I really liked that game - not spectacularly original, but well implemented across the board, nicely plotted and bursting with charm. It seems like about a week later, and here's the sequel, and man, it's really, really good. Everyone's saying that - finally a reason to own a PS3 and yada, yada.

But it really is good. Really good.

There's the same mixture of exploration and rapid-fire gunplay, of mystery and quality voice acting, but this time around the game is literally packed out with special moments - with collapsing bridges and exploding jeeps, with crawls across speeding trains and climbs up dangling railway carriages. There's constantly stuff going on. The level of detail on characters and environments throughout is breathtaking, I don't think I've seen anything as good graphically, but you're not bludgeoned with it, it's used cleverly to enhance the experience. The interplay between the characters - the cheeky one liners and the humourous asides as you play, are a joy. It's a thrill ride and a half, and the fusion between storytelling and gameplay, the feeling of flow and involvement, is a cut above anything I've ever played before.

One could make criticisms if one was feeling mean (and I usually am). The plot was a bit more of a mess than last time around, and it didn't feel quite so bursting with personality, perhaps because there were more characters involved. The villain was a bit by-the-yardy bullet-headed balkan mercenary from bullet-headed balkan mercenaries-r-us and it all wrapped up rather quickly, with a final boss fight that would probably have been satisfying enough on another game but felt a tad pedestrian after all the amazing sequences packed into the rest of this one. But overall, where the first Uncharted felt like stuff you'd mostly seen before, just very cleverly polished and implemented, this feels like a true leap forward.

10/10

Labels: games